The cultural and literary implications of China’s first pseudo-translated detective story during the Late Qing and Early Republican period

Abstract

The boom in publication of translated detective stories during the Late Qing Dynasty and Early Republican period in China reflects the popularity of this new literary genre at that time. What has been reputed as the first Chinese translation of a detective novel, however, turns out to be a pseudo-translation upon a careful examination of its intrinsic and extrinsic textual features. Zhang Kunde, its alleged translator, actually composed the story by himself to introduce this novel literary genre to China. And he pseudo-translated in such a way that the “target text” conforms to the linguistic and poetic norms of the target language at that time. This finding is in contradistinction to the belief that pseudo-translators would tend to deviate from the accepted literary norms of the target culture, and to exaggerate language features of the presumed original texts (Toury 2012). In addition to deepening our understanding of this pseudo-translational work’s formal features and generic identity, the finding also helps us to come to firmer grips with pseudo-translation as a special literary phenomenon in the target culture. 清末民初侦探小说翻译的繁荣，代表了时人对侦探小说这种“舶来品”的欢迎程度。通过研究清末民初第一部侦探小说的翻译，本文发现 , 从语言风格、体裁特征、叙述手法等文本内因素和文本外因素分析，该作品应属伪译之作。侦探小说这种异域文学体裁对于当时社会而言属于异质文化，为了能将其引入，张坤德按照传统叙述结构、以符合当时社会主流文学规范的语言，名为翻译、实为创作了这篇侦探小说。这与当今普遍认为伪译者会偏离目的语文学规范、夸大源语文本特征相冲突。本研究发现有助于我们了解伪译在中国早期传播的形式和途径，并有助于建构关于伪译这种特殊文学及文化现象的翻译理论。